Jon Sutphen At This Bar
Morning, 7:30,
Eight old men bellied up to drink.
Unlike them,
I am young,
unhappy in youth,
frightened of the now.
Eight old men and one young
all teary-eyed
in a distilled darkness
drawling in drunkenness,
devotions...extinctus.
Lea Rice coal dust
All things must flow through pain.
So it is when wind draws out the plume
from the end of breath's dark ash.
So it is when deep in the stillness of the night
your smell drifts between a sash of smoke
losing itself in the urn of memory:
my lips
somehow hallowed by the luminous tail
of your parting.
Whose end survives the stare? Whose frequent journey
mimics the past? When tipped slightly, does the earth run dry? Could I refuse your pain and throw bits of coal dust at the moon
instead?
Umbriate Press Poetry 